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I have an announcement. I am now officially retiring my TIVO. The HR20 has come a long way since last September. Those of you who know me from my postings, know that I am a big TIVO guy. I still am. I love TIVO. However, the HR20 is now a worthy replacement, and even an upgrade. (Even though it is still missing DLBs. I am still going to be a gadfly about that.)

So those of you who are sitting on the fence, go ahead and pull the trigger. You will miss some of your TIVO's features, but the HR20 makes up for it with its beautiful HD picture.

Good work DirecTV - the HR20 is ready for prime time.

And if you don't believe this was a bit of a decision for me, go back and search my postings for mention of TIVO. You will likely find I was pretty slow to accept the HR20 as a replacement. That was then - this is now - after using the HR20 for about 9 months.

I know what happened Tom. Jay found out last night that the SWM (FTM) outputs will not work with the TiVo and only the legacy outputs will.

Well that might be part of the puzzle. (oops I said puzzle, now Tom's gears are going.) But actually it was inevitable. 80 HD channels by September was a major decision factor as well. That's 80 extra channels my TIVO can't get.

And I would not have done it if I didn't trust the HR20. Like I said, it is "good to go".

I'll be retiring my SD-DVR80 this August after completing the 2 year commitment on it and I'll use the HR10-250 for ATSC and DIRECTV SD programming. I've already sold off several standalone TiVos because I used them for over-the-air channels and I didn't want to wait until the analog shutdown date because I know someone else can use them for satellite or cable.

I ordered an ATSC PCI tuner card for my MCE 2005 PC and I'm quite happy with both that and the HR20. Yeah, I started with TiVo, but the fact is a lot of the things a TiVotee loves about that platform, I have no use for, like "Suggestions". I don't believe I'll be doing Sunday Ticket this year, so DLB isn't crucial. I don't use that for anything other than Sports.

TiVo's a fine DVR platform, but I've found in this day and age, it's not the only solution out there.

TCF thinks posts like this are all from DirecTV employees. Many think there is no way the HR20 is any good since they "heard" that it was crap. Sigh....

As for me, I have 2 SD DirecTivos. The plan is to replace one of them with another HR20. 80+ HD channels is gonna fill 2 tuners up REAL fast. I need 4 HD tuners. The other Tivo will remain on the SD TV. I also can't bring myself to get an R15.

TCF thinks posts like this are all from DirecTV employees. Many think there is no way the HR20 is any good since they "heard" that it was crap. Sigh....

As for me, I have 2 SD DirecTivos. The plan is to replace one of them with another HR20. 80+ HD channels is gonna fill 2 tuners up REAL fast. I need 4 HD tuners. The other Tivo will remain on the SD TV. I also can't bring myself to get an R15.

Well - if they think I am an employee, they can go back and look at my posting history.

There is another thing for which I need to give Kudos to D* for:

From a business perspective, D* recognizes that having the subscriber base is more important than making money on the box. Tivo wants WAY too much money for their HD box, and they just won't budge on the price. DirecTV is willing to make deals on the HR20 in order to keep their subscribers happy. That is wise. And I give them big credit for doing so. And in fact - every time they do that, they are pounding another nail in Tivos coffin. Tivo needs to start giving away their HD box if they want to compete with D*'s signal + HD Lineup + DVR box.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not going to just do a 180. I'm just saying the HR20 is now a worthy upgrade. Now that most of the bugs are worked out, it can stand toe to toe with TIVO and surpass it in many areas.

However, Tivo got it right with simplicity, and intuitiveness. And so, thats what will be missed, but not as much anymore.

The point of my post - is for all the Tivo lovers out there (like me). If you have been waiting, wait no more.

From my point of view, a lot of my customers like the R15/HR20. The main thing they like is that the menus, guides and so on are the same as their D10/11/12s. They like that. D* hit the mark on that point.

A year ago when I started installing, I had a DTivo. I loved the thing. I could pretty much zip around the menus without waiting for the screen to update. Now, its painfully slow to use.

Tivo needs to come down off their high horse and do whatever they can to get their boxes in the hands of customers whatever the cost. Otherwise, we might as well start a Tivo death watch pool.

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Now I've only had my HR20 since Tuesday. What I will say is it ain't half bad. But the general description I have at this time is that it's "clumsy"....for lack of a better word. Why would I even think that to view/manage my SLs I have to go into SETUP?

#1) The Remote: What chimp designed this? You have volume mid remote and trick play at the top. A remote should be handled expertly with one hand without the need to move the remove up and down in that hand. Just look at any Harmony remote or even a Tivo. No real big deal as I have a Harmony 880 and the RC34 is going in the "remote bin".

#2) Trick play just isn't crisp like my HR10, the guide is no speedier and has 2 less channels on it. Maybe after you use the HR20 for a few months or a year you get use to it. But sometimes it seems ok and other times it seems I'm in some type of time delay and things just take longer...or maybe it's just the beers kicking in. Also, the Slip just doesn't cut it.

#3) Already ran into some problem with the live buffer in which I put a show on pause (mpeg2) to fix lunch, came back and watched another 20 minutes before it got to a point it just froze. Thinking about it the point it froze was probably the point in the live show that I came back and resumed playing. I could RR and tried FF and the slip to get past the "dead zone" with no luck. Channel up and down didn't even clear up the problem. Oh well, it was just an old Bond movie and I moved on.

#4) Watched a recorded MPEG4 (local channel) last night and experienced frame shots from the NBC show that was currently being aired while playing the recorded program. I was watching the NBC Nightly news and say frame shots of the 1 in 100 game show. News was recorded at 5:30 and I was watching about 7:00-7:30.

#5) Audio dropouts (1-3 seconds) on SD programming and video pixelation also on SD programming. More than with the HR10.

#6) Wife hates it.

But I'm giving it time. And maybe that's the trick. Over time HR10 users forget how responsive that was. They forget about Wishlists and suggestions. And over time I may too. But as the OP mentioned, I will not forget about DLBs.

Now, once the R15 gets stable, we'll talk about replacing all the standard-def TiVo's I have .... we'll see.

The way I see it - since I paid the DVR lifetime fee, whether I have 10 'regular' receivers on my account or 10 DVR's, it costs me exactly the same. So why not have DVR's?

The initial acquisition costs have been higher, of course. My first DTiVo (GXCEBOT) I picked up in 2001 for $75. It was selling for $200+ at the time, but I bought the floor model at Circuit City. The rest of them were either $75 or less.